


things that can't be changed

by eternal_elenea



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-11
Updated: 2011-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternal_elenea/pseuds/eternal_elenea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Leave me in the rain / Wait until my clothes cling to my frame / Wipe away your tear stains.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	things that can't be changed

**Author's Note:**

> Thrown together after this morning's loss by Andy and withdrawal by Novak at Bercy. Un-betaed, so I apologize for any grammar errors. Title and subtitle from "[Landfill](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpWO_byqSr8)" by Daughter.

He gets a call in the middle of the night. He's laying in bed in another hotel room, somehow, somewhere – Paris, he thinks after a moment. The phone rings and he reaches towards the beside table where the alarm clock reads 3:37. The world is blurred around him and he wants to roll over, cover his head with a pillow, ignore the world until his match tomorrow. He looks up towards the ringing: the blackberry screen is bright and the room looks fogged.

He's still half asleep and he doesn't check who's calling, puts the phone up to his ear. He's on his back, staring up at the ceiling, and he doesn't expect the quiet that he hears when he answers. It's silent, completely silent, and then there's a breath, slight, stuttered, (too loud). Then, a second, a hiccup, like a breath caught too soon, swallowed back inside, feverish.

"Nole," Andy says. His voice is still rough from sleep, low, and Andy can feel the vibrations in his chest as the word comes out. The air reverberates too, echoing with the sound of the word. Andy rubs at his eyes.

Nole doesn't respond; it's quiet except for the breathing – louder, now; too hard, too long, like it's meant to be soothing. Andy can hear the way that the noises lilt upwards, hysterical, can hear the half-moment in between them like someone has to keep reminding him to breathe in again.

(It reminds him of how he was told the same thing – deep breaths; he remembers how they turned into thoughts crowded up inside him, unable to get out. He remembers curling up, hyperventilating until it was worse than crying, until Jamie was on the other side of the door, making panicked noises. He remembers how he wouldn't open the door for hours and when he did, Jamie was still there, looked up at him from the ground where he'd collapsed, eyes red.)

Andy wonders if he used to sound like this, if Jamie had felt just as powerless through a door as Andy does over the phone. He's silent and Novak breathes like he's finished crying, trying to calm down and instead working himself up. Andy clutches at the phone; imagines Nole's fingers, white-knuckled, on the other side. He makes himself breathe, slowly, steadily, into the mouthpiece. "I'm here" he thinks, but the words don't form on his lips.

The loop repeats in his head until he's not sure where the words begin or end, until they're pieced together like a shattered teacup, until Novak's breath has softened and slowed and they're breathing together. Seconds or minutes or hours, the words repeat, he's not really sure, doesn't really care; Andy wonders if Novak heard them through the static, if he understood them though they'd never been said.

Novak laughs, brimming with an edge of disbelief, and Andy can hear the rustle of sheets through the phone. "Sorry," Nole says; "I don't know..." he says.

"It hurts," he says, too mildly.

Andy wants to ask him: "what?" He runs his fingers against his forehand, stays quiet.

"The doctors," Novak says, "they think I must stop."

They both breathe, disjointed, in and out and in again, and Andy wants to reach across the distance. He wishes that he could do something besides sit here, but he still can't open his mouth, form words, do _anything_.

"I do need to stop," Novak admits, voice cracking.

"Yeah," Andy finally says after too many moments, after too many things passing through his head, after too many breaths between them.

He does need to stop, Andy knows. He remembers, too clearly, the agony on Nole's face as he had fallen, clutching his back, mindless, in front of his home crowd. His country had expected everything of him, asked too much of him, and still he gave it to them, open-palmed, like a child grasping for his older brother's fingers.

(Andy knows too well that feeling, remembers lifting his eyes towards Jamie's (his mother's, the fans'), waiting for approval.)

"It's okay," Andy wants to say, "It's just an injury. It'll be okay."

He wants to tell Novak that it won't take long, just a couple of weeks, that it's just an inflamed muscle, that he won't go back to being forgotten, overlooked, just because of this. He wants to tell Novak that it's okay to withdraw, that he'll be back for London. He wants to reassure Novak, to make Novak believe in himself again, to stop the mar of frustration in Novak's eyebrows as he misses another serve.

"I love you," he says, instead. He thinks that they might be the same thing.


End file.
